To obtain the overall country risk score, Euromoney assigns a weighting to nine categories. These are political risk (25% weighting), economic performance (25%), debt indicators (10%), debt in default or rescheduled (10%), credit ratings (10%), access to bank finance (5%), access to short-term finance (5%), access to capital markets (5%), and forfaiting (5%).

• Political risk (25% weighting): the risk of non-payment or non-servicing of payment for goods or services, loans, trade-related finance and dividends, and the non-repatriation of capital. Risk analysts give each country a score between 10 and zero: the higher, the better.

• Economic performance (25%): based (1) on results of Euromoney poll of economic projections and (2) on GNI (Atlas Method) figures per capita.

• Debt indicators (10%): calculated using the following ratios from the World Bank’s Global Development Finance 2007. Total debt stocks to GNP (A),...